Hough Transform-Based Large Dynamic Reflection Coefficient Micro-Motion Target Detection in SAR

Abstract

Special phase modulation of SAR echoes resulted from target rotation or vibration, is a phenomenon called the micro-Doppler (m-D) effect. Such an effect offers favorable information for micro-motion (MM) target detection, thereby improving the performance of the synthetic aperture radar (SAR) system. However, when there are MM targets with large differences in reflection coefficient, the weak reflection components will be difficult to be detected. To find a solution to this problem, we propose a novel algorithm. First, we extract and detect the strongest reflection component. By removing the strongest reflection component from the original azimuth echo one by one, we realize the detection of reflection components sequentially, from the strongest to the weakest. Our algorithm applies to detecting MM targets with different reflection coefficients and has high precision of parameter estimation. The results of simulation and field experiments verify the advantages of the algorithm.